Mercury poisoning confirmed among Amazon villagers

People living alongside the rivers of the Amazon basin are being poisoned by mercury dumped higher up the river by gold-miners. No official statistics are available on the number of victims. But several separate investigations have found concrete evidence of contamination among people who live miles downstream from the gold mines.

Fernando Branches, a doctor based in the city of Santarem, analysed the amount of mercury in hairs from 20 members of a nearby riverside community. The World Health Organization's safety limit for mercury is two micrograms per gram of hair. All 20 people were over the safe limit. Levels in some, including a child of 16 months, were more than three times over the limit. The mercury almost certainly came from contaminated fish. 'The people examined are a riverside community who have nothing to do with gold-miners. They eat fish for lunch, fish for dinner and fish for breakfast,' ...

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